What I think you're referring to, Roger, is the way that snippets of "actuality" were cut into the songs. The recording of "Shoals of Herring" with these interjections from Sam Larner has been included in a number of compilations at different times. There may be instances where phrases from the informants were incorporated into the songs MacColl wrote for the Ballads, but they don't exactly spring into my mind . .

BTW these extracts were quite literally cut into the song recordings . . the Ballads were edited by the old technique of cutting the recorded tapes with a razor blade and splicing them together . . .

[Unlike the interview heard recently on Radio 3 where some pretentious US composer claimed to have been literally torn in two by a dichotomy (or some such) between minimalism and heavy metal . . He was so unintentionally absurd we just had to give up listening to him . . .]